About Time
by Redlance-ck
Summary: After H.G. is re-reinstated, she finally snags a moment in which she is – more or less – alone with Myka. [One-shot]


**Disclaimer**: Warehouse 13, the world and the characters that inhabit it do not belong to me in any way, though sometimes I lie away at night wishing that they did and what I'd do with them if they did. And then I write those thoughts down.

**A/N**: So, last night I dreamt that I was watching the new episode of Warehouse 13. In my dream this – more or less – happened and then tumblr proceeded to explode, followed shortly by the rest of the internet. It was all quite glorious, until I woke up.

* * *

In true dashing English agent fashion, Helena had swung in at the eleventh hour and saved them all. She had quite literally swung in too, hand firmly grasping the butt of the newly put together grappler she'd somehow found time to engineer during her, well, whatever she'd been doing. And after being willing to sacrifice herself in order to destroy the Janus coin, saving Myka's life, voicing her concerns over Artie to Mrs Frederic for no reason other than because she feared for the safety of both him and her friends, and then saving the world, there really was little hope of the Regents neglecting to reinstate her. Every one of them was under the impression that should they have started to breathe words alluding to H.G. Wells being taken away again, that her loyalties need further testing, they would have been pitch forked rather violently.

However, even with her reinstatement, it's a week before the woman is actually settled back in her old room at the Bed and Breakfast, a building made sombre by the obvious and painful loss of its sole devotee. Leena was gone, slain by a familiar hand owned by a man who had no control over his actions, yet behaved at though he had picked up the gun of his own volition. Their family is fractured, irrevocably, and some wounds never heal.

It is a week before Helena is settled, but the events that had transpired in her absence have no hope of smoothing so easily. And so it is with no small sense of guilt that she approaches Myka, tall form leaning in close to Pete to bump his shoulder with some good-natured force. He rubs at it, far too enthusiastically, and Helena watches his profile shift into that of a hurt puppy as she approaches from the side. Claudia is the first to spot her and offers her a smile, but Myka is already turning to face her, giving H.G. the impression that the redhead was not the first one aware of her presence.

"Oh, finally, a voice of reason!" Pete calls towards her, turning his head in her direction and throwing out a hand, speaking as though he'd been waiting on her arrival for hours. It has been surprisingly pleasant, Helena has found, to be in Pete's 'good book', a place she had worried – and continues to do so – she might never be able to inscribe enough apologies to right her wrongs. But as she'd learned her first night back beneath the roof of her home, sometimes apologies needn't be voiced. The doing so only serving to rip open wounds that might never fully heal. She has not spoken Miss Hernandez's name to him, or anyone, since and will not speak it in the future.

"Pete." Myka's voice is clipped and warning as she grinds out the man's name between visibly clenched teeth. Pete glances at her.

"Don't smile at me like that, it's scary." And with that, he brushes off her threat, refocusing his attention on the inventor. Opposite, sat upon a desk littered with notes and with her legs crossed beneath her, Claudia smiles at them. It's a flash of the young woman she was, before another friend was taken from her, and H.G. files the memory of it away. She does not like to see such a bright spark so dulled by the misfortunes of life. "H.G., you think Myka's hot, right?"

"Pete!" Her exacerbation is that of a woman who has had to scold her child far too many times in public and her face flares to show her embarrassment. He flaps a hand at her, rolling his eyes, and Claudia lets out a laugh. Helena arches an eyebrow, dark eyes flickering first over Pete's face, then dancing a slow waltz over Myka's body. It isn't lecherous, but it is not innocently appraising.

"I believe I would use words of a strikingly different strain to describe her, Agent Lattimer, but I find myself unable to disagree." And she leaves it at that, cocking both eyebrows in a silent command for him to continue along his train of thought as Myka drops wide eyes to the concrete ground beneath their feet.

"Assuming that that means yes," Pete starts with a bewildered shake of his had, "then riddle me this." He claps his hands together, lacing all of his fingers but the index and thumbs, and then points at Myka. "Miss Colorado Springs here claims she was Miss Geek Chic way before it was cool, but won't offer up the evidence."

"I told you, I don't even have my yearbook here with me." Myka protests, rolling her eyes and looking as though she can't fathom how they even got to this point.

"Lie." Steve slides as smoothly onto the desk beside Claudia as he does into the conversation, and he leans forward to receive Pete's hanging high-five.

"Is there a question here somewhere?" Helena asks, propping her elbow on the arm wrapped around her torso and absently thumbing the ring on her finger as she regards the scene, and Myka's irritation, with not a little amusement. Pete jerks his fingers towards H.G. and then his hands come apart again, palms facing the impossibly high ceiling above them.

"It can't be that bad, right?" He asks, looking at her as though the answer is obvious and his question very close to rhetorical. Which it isn't, of course, but Helena allows him to finish his thought so as to not interrupt him, as any well raised woman of the Victorian era would. "I mean," he directs his attention to Myka once more and she all but winces under his, and as a result everyone else's, attention. "Look at you. You're smokin'."

"And also feeling really, really uncomfortable right now. Can you please stop?" Myka tries, helplessly, knowing it won't hinder him in the slightest. It doesn't.

"You can't possibly have looked **that** bad in high school."

"We **all** looked bad in high school, dude." Claudia interjects, mercifully, from her spot beside the newly-breathing agent. "That's kind of what high school is for." They stare at her, waiting for her to continue, and after a few moments and an exaggerated eye roll, she does. "It keeps us confined from the rest of the world while we outgrow out ache and bad hair surrounded by the people who are going to ridicule us in a way that no one in the adult world is capable, presumably because at some point those people finally grow hearts, and it's all to prepare us for the harsh tundra of real life." Steve stares at her, Pete blinks whilst slowly mouthing out an elongated 'wow', and Myka simply nods her head and gives a small, affirmative shrug of her shoulders. After a half minute of contemplative silence, Pete whirls around to face his partner once more.

"I still don't buy it." Myka lets out a sound of pure, undiluted frustration, and he once more waves a hand out towards the inventor. "H.G., back me up here. You can't make a hot mess out of a mud pie, right?" Myka makes a noise that quite perfectly conveys the level of insult she feels as though she was just delivered, and Helena tilts her head, letting the hand wearing the ring with which she is toying fall lamp as she shoots a quick glance in the other woman's direction. Their eyes meet, lock for a heartbeat, and then slip away as though a month's worth of artifact static did not just pass between them.

"On the contrary, Peter." He makes a face because he hates it when she calls him that and her tone of voice dictates that she is well aware of his distaste. "Are you not familiar with the tale of 'The Ugly Duckling'?" She doesn't pay attention to his response and is instead distracted by the way her gaze is once more slipping towards the object of their discussion. "It is a rare and beautiful soul that finds themselves turned into the vision those with open eyes already perceive them to be." And just like that, the discussion meets its end. Pete throws his hands into the air and barrels headlong into a tangent about traitorous imports with a penchant for saying the right things at the wrong times, that it would be way cooler if H.G. would give in and be his wing-woman, and why couldn't he win an argument just this once? Thereby completely undermining the impact of the inventor's statement, though his words do little to drown out the ringing they've left in Myka's ears. It is not unpleasant and it reminds her, sickeningly, of birdsong. But Claudia had felt it, and a quick glimpse at Steve tells Helena that he did too, even if he's trying very hard to pretend that he didn't by trading barbs with Pete in order to give them some sense of privacy in the moment. Claudia is staring at them, entirely unabashed, grin stretching from ear to ear as she completely ignores the way Pete is calling her name.

And then something happens, maybe Pete finally catches her attention, or perhaps Steve says something that rouses Myka from her daze, but suddenly they are all involved in friendly banter and the moment is pushed aside. Nudged under one of the bottom shelves in an aisle of the Warehouse by a gentle foot for later. And for five, maybe ten minutes, there's nothing but playful jibes about missions gone awry – the safe kind, those that did not end in near-death or worse – and Pete's inability to keep his hands to himself on any of them. Then there comes a lull in the conversation and, as Helena finds is usually the case, an opportunity presents itself.

She reaches out, still smiling at the way Claudia, with laughter in her eyes and warmth in her voice, is teasing Pete in a way that only a younger sister can tease an older sibling, and rests her hand against Myka's forearm. And it strikes her instantaneously the second the connection is made that this is perhaps the most they have touched since that day in Yellowstone. She wonders if Myka realises the same thing and tries not to let the revelation weight the contact. Then eyes the colour of leaves with the sunlight shining through them are on her and Helena feels lighter somehow.

"Might I steal you away for a moment?" She says, glancing at all of them in turn but only seeing Myka, who nods her acquiescence and allows Helena to loop their arms together and guide her away. Myka flashes a them a smile over her shoulder, and it as unsure as it is hopeful as it is nervous, and they hear Pete warning H.G. not to loose her because the really annoying ones are hard to replace.

They do not walk for long and where they end up is far enough away from the group to be out of earshot and yet not so much that they are unfindable. They have not been there for longer than a short string of rapid heartbeats before Myka finds herself turned into an embrace as familiar to her as it is foreign – for imagination can only make things seem real until reality shows you otherwise – and feels the press of warm lips against her own. Soft and yielding and entirely unobtrusive. It doesn't last for longer than a handful of seconds, but Myka's breath is stolen as though she'd been submerged beneath warm waters for minutes nonetheless. When Helena retreats slightly, drops her arm away, allowing Myka's vision focuses once more, the taller woman blinks eyes that never closed and Helena thinks, with amusement that quickly vanishes into anxiety's shadow, that she looks rather stunned. And Helena can't really blame her.

"What was that for?" Myka finally asks, words low and hushed and almost gravelly. H.G. offers her a smile, lips stretching wider than the feeling behind it warrants. It betrays her nervousness, knows it the second she notices Myka noticing it, and it wavers at the corners before falling into one more befitting of the way her heart is pounding within her chest.

"To say thank you." She offers, shooting for easy and only falling a little short of reaching it. "For accepting the apology I haven't yet had chance to voice." And that's the bulk of it at the end of the day, the huge hulking mass of H.G.'s problem. How can one even begin to apologise for acts their mind can no longer understand them capable of committing? She knows why she did the things she did, allowed lies to spill like easy compliments from her tongue, but she cannot reconcile the person she was with the person she now strives to be. Wants desperately to be. For herself, as well as the woman before her. They are not the same and there is such a desperation in her for her to prove that to Myka, that she wants to be able to make amends. But she doesn't know how. Can't imagine what a person who has done the things she's done will have to do in order to gain back trust that should never have been given in the first place. "I **am** sorry, Myka. For so many things." The words leave her despite the gnawing in her gut that tells her they are simply **not enough**. "Least of all my apparent abandoning of all those I hold dear." Myka can hear the aggravation in Helena's voice, can see the frustration darkening her features as slender fingers run through silky locks of a similar shade, dishevelling a handful of strands before letting them fall perfectly back into place. "I can assure you I was rather less than willing to go silently." And despite everything – the would-be intensity of the moment, the mountain of things yet unsaid, the obvious distaste the woman standing in front her holds for herself – Myka chuckles at the mental image. Helena's attention, having drifting from her during her moment of outward introspectiveness, is tugged back to Myka's face in time to see lips curve upwards in a way that makes her heart ache for the months she could not witness such a seemingly ordinary sight.

"I can imagine." But with eyes that sparkle like the sun-dappled canopy of a forest ceiling and a smile that reaches into Helena's very chest and touches some part of her that had long ago grown cold, and warms it; there is **nothing** ordinary about Myka.

And they are still close, almost touching, and Helena wonders when the time to talk will be. Because it isn't now, on the floor of Warehouse 13, with their friends less than a fifteen second jog away. Souls will be bared, likely beneath the roof of a Bed and Breakfast not too far from where they are now later that night, but not now. Now is the time for Helena to wrinkle her nose a little sheepishly and echo the smile she is being graced with and say;

"Also, I thought it was about time." And it is.

As it is for **Myka** to kiss **her**, for the first time.

And they stand, with Myka pressed lightly against the shelf at her back and her thumb stroking the smooth plane of Helena's cheek, for a long, quiet while.

Because Helena's kiss had been quick and tentative.

And Myka suspects she can do much, much better than that.


End file.
